i will love you on your birthday (i will love you better than them)
by anamericanmarriage
Summary: Scenes from a birthday.


_I couldn't find a relevant Richard Siken quote to pull for the title, so: title is from "Birthday" by the bird and the bee._

* * *

Stewie is listening to Lana Del Rey. Brian immediately knows what kind of day this is going to be.

"Stewie?" Brian asks, loud enough to be heard over the music but quiet enough so as not to come across as angry or irritated or otherwise upset.

Stewie closes his eyes and sighs so heavily that his whole chest inflates and deflates with it. "I am _listening_ ," he says sharply, "to Lana Del Rey. Please don't bother me."

"I know who you're listening to," Brian says. There goes the effort of trying not to seem upset. "You made me take you to her concert."

"Funny," Stewie says, still not turning the music down or off so it sounds very much like they're screaming at each other even though neither of them are quite that angry yet. "I thought that was a date. I thought we went together. I guess _you_ took _me._ Quite an act of charity, that."

"Don't start," Brian says, and Stewie immediately curls his upper lip and says, pointedly, _"You_ started it."

"I didn't start anything!" Brian insists. "I just said your name and you started bitching at me. And turn that fucking music down, I can barely hear you."

Stewie maintains eye contact and turns the volume up, and it's only then that Brian realizes that he's listening to "Young and Beautiful."

"You're _twelve,"_ Brian reminds him incredulously. "You're so young that it's illegal for us to be dating. What point are you trying to make here?"

"I'm _thirteen,"_ Stewie says, finally turning the music off. Silence fills the room like a living thing. "Today's my birthday, you jackass."

* * *

Dating Stewie, at the end of the day, is not wholly unlike dating a woman. The similarities helped ease the difficulties that Brian had coming to terms with his sexuality at first, but at his most annoyed, he _loathes_ it. Stewie is like the worst gay stereotypes in that way - nagging, dramatic; everything is a Thing with him. It's exhausting. The sex is amazing, and Brian would, to be frank, die without Stewie in his life, but being with him in this way takes work.

It's no surprise, then, that, when Brian brings him home a bouquet of red roses, Stewie throws them out their bedroom window. Brian tries cake, next, and Stewie throws that out the window, too. He doesn't say a word, and Brian doesn't stop him. He anticipated as much.

He goes to the jeweler's, but everything is far too expensive. He tries the mall, too, but Stewie can sniff out cheap like Brian can sniff out other dogs, so he leaves the jewelry store there and tries to untense his jaw long enough to eat a soft pretzel at the pretzel place that Stewie never lets him eat at, concerned about Brian's sodium intake.

It's not very good. The pretzel, he means, though this day certainly hasn't been very good, either. Stewie, he hates to admit, is right.

* * *

Brian is not a romantic by nature. He loves Stewie, and loves him so deeply that he sometimes thinks that he can feel it in his bones, but he's never been good at doing the sappy shit that Stewie laps up. You'd think someone so emotionally and mentally mature would agree with Brian that Valentine's Day and anniversaries and all those occasions are inherently meaningless capitalist extortion plots, but Stewie's eyes get so big and shiny when Brian plays along with it that he can't help but continue funding the American war machine or wherever the five dollars that he spends on a heart-shaped box of chocolates go.

* * *

Stewie doesn't come downstairs for his birthday dinner. Peter is, as usual, incredibly laissez-faire about Stewie's tantrums, and it falls to Brian to comfort Lois over the meal that she cooked for Stewie going to waste - at least in her eyes; a meal in the Griffin household never truly goes to waste when Chris eats enough portions to compensate.

Peter and Lois turn in early, and Chris and Meg are out of the house, so it's easy to slip into Stewie's room uninterrupted once the lights go out.

He's not laying in bed, which Brian had been expecting. Instead, he's sitting at the edge of it, listening to music again - probably still Lana Del Rey, though he's wearing ear phones this time, so Brian doesn't know for sure - though he takes his ear phones out as soon as he notices Brian enter the room.

"Get out of here," he practically snarls.

"It's my bedroom, too," he points out, and before Stewie can get a word in edgewise, Brian sits next to him and says, "You're an idiot."

"Get. Out. Of. Here," Stewie repeats. "Go sleep in the Fat Man's bed. Or go sleep at the bottom of a river bank! I honestly don't care."

"That hurts," Brian says as evenly as possible, "but I understand why you're lashing out. You don't want me dead, you're just angry that I forgot your birthday."

"Did it take you almost a whole day to figure that out?" Stewie snaps.

"No, I knew as soon as you started yelling at me." Brian pauses. "But I didn't come in here to yell back. I came here to apologize."

"Apology not accepted, you dick," Stewie says. "You literally just called me an idiot and you expect me to forgive you?"

"No," Brian says, "I don't expect you to forgive me. I'm not apologizing to make myself feel better. I'm apologizing because I'm genuinely remorseful. I don't like hurting you, Stewie."

"Is this conflict resolution?" Stewie asks. "I'm genuinely curious. Have you been reading self-help books or seeing a therapist behind my back?"

"No," Brian says again. "I'm just sorry. For as much as I love you, I should remember your birthday, and I apologize for forgetting. But that's not why I called you an idiot."

"Dare I ask why you did call me an idiot, then?" Stewie intones.

"Because you think that you're too old for me," Brian tells him. "You think I'm only attracted to you because of, fuck, I don't know, my apparent latent pedophilia? I'd love you if you were a hundred years old, and you're smart enough to know that without me having to tell you. I'm in awe of your intelligence, Stewie, but I find it almost incomprehensible how _dumb_ you can be sometimes. I love you because you're you. I loved you..." He swallows hard. "I loved you when you were an infant and I love you now and I'm not going to stop loving you ever."

Stewie stays quiet for a few moments before Brian is suddenly filled with a lap full of him. He buries his face into Brian's neck and sniffles. "You're the idiot," he complains, "taking so long to tell me. Did you know that, after I threw that cake out the window, I was waiting for you to come back? I wasn't going to give you a third strike. But then I'd thought that you'd truly given up..."

"I was looking for a birthday present," Brian admits. "But the jeweler's is too expensive and the jewelry store in the mall is too cheap. I just ate a soft pretzel instead."

"I've told you a thousand times not to eat at that pretzel place!" Stewie chides him. "Your sodium intake is too high!"

"You know what?" Brian tells him. "It wasn't very good. You were right."

"That's really the only birthday present that I need, you conceding that I'm right," Stewie says. Brian can feel him smiling into his neck, and then he sees the smile as Stewie disengages from his neck before he presses a sweet, nearly-chaste kiss to his mouth.


End file.
